How can ‘green’ be achieved ?

[Pocster]

‘Green’ you know carbon neutral / net zero / whatever 

 

Most of us guys building will insulate , ASHP , pv etc. etc .

Because we understand the benefits and accept the costs but also associated savings .

My neighbors have a (expletive deleted) off massive house and are minted .

They have zero interest in better insulation or pv . Yet can easily afford it .

Less wealthy people can’t afford it nor would want a loan .

LL’s will be forced to epc c for rentals but not millions of privately owned homes .

So how do the majority of old stock homes get upgraded to meet targets ?

It’s simply not possible ….

[ProDave]

41 minutes ago, pocster said:

‘How can Green be achieved, Green’ you know carbon neutral / net zero / whatever 

It CAN'T.

 

The sooner the politicians accepted that, and then set about what CAN be achieved, the better.

 

We have a well insulated low energy house but I don't kid myself it is carbon neutral.  It NEVER will be until ALL the electricity generated comes from renewables.  I doubt that will ever happen.

 

But it does annoy me how some people are completely disinterested in at least trying to make things better.  I have wired several new builds where the owners / builders were trying, and generally going a good job of well insulated and air tight.  I have also done 2 that were notably complete rubbish (same builder) lots of insulation but installed so appallingly badly with gaps for air to bypass much of it rendering it useless, and no understanding from the builder at how bad it was.  But building control do not seem to check these things.

 

And the mass market builders still build to the absolute minimum that will pass building regs, the only solution for that attitude is make the absolute minimum standard acceptable a bloody good standard.

 

But the issue of what to do with the old houses, nobody has a clue or has the courage to talk about it.  The best we have is rip out the boiler and replace with an ASHP and that will solve it. In your dreams.

 

I really wish some respected think tank would pick up on this, spell it out, that we are NOT going to reach carbon neutral, so now lets focus our attention on doing the best we can.

 

One that made my blood boil, i saw an advert for some of these posh electric panel heaters, advertised as something like "heat your home with zero carbon"  NO THEY ARE NOT and won't be until ALL electricity generation is carbon neutral.

 

People are being conned, they will buy those and think that is all they have to do and not bother doing anything else.  If only they understood or were advised properly.

[joe90]

5 minutes ago, ProDave said:

People are being conned,

Yes, a friend of mine was going to do it till I explained it was bullocks.

[Pocster]

Agree . But what earth do we do with old housing stock ? . Bar some magic technology that doesn’t exist . Millions of leaky , poorly insulated homes .

It does indeed require a think tank to inform the government that this ‘plan’ isn’t going to work .

[RichardL]

Its not all bad though is it -  I see the point re the scale of the problem.

a. If slowly the mind set moves away from burning anything at the residential level towards more central generation then you're on the right track.
b. if central can then shift away from burning things too - then you've almost got a strategy.

Is a. helped by marketing lies to make the sales -  a & b probably only happen in 2-3/5-6? owner's tenure on a lot of the properties.

Might be too slow depending on one's perceived sense of urgency?

[Pocster]

16 minutes ago, RichardL said:

Its not all bad though is it -  I see the point re the scale of the problem.

a. If slowly the mind set moves away from burning anything at the residential level towards more central generation then you're on the right track.
b. if central can then shift away from burning things too - then you've almost got a strategy.

Is a. helped by marketing lies to make the sales -  a & b probably only happen in 2-3/5-6? owner's tenure on a lot of the properties.

Might be too slow depending on one's perceived sense of urgency?

What about gas though ? . Just about everyone’s boiler is one . I know the concept of hydrogen gets kicked around - but there’s no efficient method to produce it on the scale required .

What about millions of humble gas boilers !???

 

[RichardL]

11 minutes ago, pocster said:

What about gas though ?

Absolutely - win hearts and minds - should create demand from home owners trying to stop burning Gas, but also eventually home buyers seeing less value in a gas heating.

That 'should' create demand for a solution - I don't know what that is - but some scientist or enrepreneur should see an opening and something to go alongside PV and A2W, A2A etc.


Perhaps I'm being to green myself -  but still strikes me the strategy is ok.

TBH - I'd love to be around when modular nuclear is a thing or an RTG (Voyager style) at the end of the garden

Edited June 12, 2023 by RichardL

[joe90]

11 minutes ago, pocster said:

What about millions of humble gas boilers !???

I now have one of those 😳.

[Pocster]

1 minute ago, joe90 said:

I now have one of those 😳.

You are a bad mofo then !

[joe90]

1 minute ago, pocster said:

You are a bad mofo then !

Blame the judge, not what I wanted at all……however my little cottage was renovated ten years ago with all new insulation, double glazing, fairly draught proof and small to heat 👍 (and a small wood stove and as a resident of the Forest I am allowed to collect fallen wood to burn (as it’s no thicker than my arm) 🤔.

Edited June 12, 2023 by joe90

[Pocster]

5 minutes ago, RichardL said:

TBH - I'd love to be around when modular nuclear is a thing or an RTG (Voyager style) at the end of the garden

Think that may be a while ….

 

[Pocster]

I also wonder Labours views on this ( assuming they get in of course ) .

Of course one party is pretty much like another I.e choosing the best turd .

[RichardL]

4 minutes ago, pocster said:

10 minutes ago, RichardL said:

TBH - I'd love to be around when modular nuclear is a thing or an RTG (Voyager style) at the end of the garden

Think that may be a while ….

Roles Royce I think are playing with it - presumably for planes first - but if a box the size of a jet engine produces energy in flight....

Also the Russians apparently hat a go in the 70s to drive light houses by the thousand, only producing <10W -  unfort issues there is they didn't maintain them, lost them etc -  just don't go opening rusty 1m spheres if you're on a hike in Russia!

I suspect its all going to be  while.

[Pocster]

1 minute ago, RichardL said:

Roles Royce I think are playing with it - presumably for planes first - but if a box the size of a jet engine produces energy in flight....

Also the Russians apparently hat a go in the 70s to drive light houses by the thousand, only producing <10W -  unfort issues there is they didn't maintain them, lost them etc -  just don't go opening rusty 1m spheres if you're on a hike in Russia!

I suspect its all going to be  while.

AI fuelled robots ( as dopey media like it ) will have killed us all before then .

[SteamyTea]

Just got back home, so shall do a proper reply later.

But last night, after an excellent curry, I listened to this.

(expletive deleted)ing brilliant for a spoof.

Just get the kids and the women out the room.

 

https://www.bbc.co.uk/sounds/play/p0fsz1pc

 

 

[RichardL]

1 minute ago, pocster said:

AI fuelled robots ( as dopey media like it ) will have killed us all before then .

Another hobby horse for musing

I suspect the AI just needs to hire a lawyer - or a lawyer see an opportunity to prove AI is sentient, therefore cannot turn it off and must fulfil its 'human' rights to feed it energy...

Spiral that one for a while and the AI data centres will be prioritised over humans for resources...   they won't physically wipe us out -  AI if its any good will use our own rules & laws against us.

[Pocster]

Ideology against reality 

[Pocster]

Just now, RichardL said:

Another hobby horse for musing

I suspect the AI just needs to hire a lawyer - or a lawyer see an opportunity to prove AI is sentient, therefore cannot turn it off and must fulfil its 'human' rights to feed it energy...

Spiral that one for a while and the AI data centres will be prioritised over humans for resources...   they won't physically wipe us out -  AI if its any good will use our own rules & laws against us.

AI will keep me as an ex software engineer. You and everyone else is (expletive deleted)ed though .

[joe90]

I keep thinking of the film “I robot” 🤷‍♂️

[Mr Punter]

1 hour ago, pocster said:

What about millions of humble gas boilers !???

 

Until the price of gas is much nearer to electricity I can't see them going away.

[Pocster]

1 minute ago, Mr Punter said:

 

Until the price of gas is much nearer to electricity I can't see them going away.

I agree 

[SteamyTea]

We have to electrify everything, and (expletive deleted)ing quickly. The IET said about this 30 years ago. Though I think they were the IEE then.

 

I think the biggest difference in strategy to heat old homes will be what happens in the same street. If the neighbours get PV and a heat pump, other soon will. 

The real test of government policy will be with EVs, if they backtrack on that too much, then we know they will on gas boilers.

There really is a lot of nonsense said about the EV and HP policies. Same tactics that the Brexiteers used, rubbish others research, but never show your own.

1 hour ago, ProDave said:

nobody has a clue or has the courage to talk about it. 

Don't know where you get your news from, lots of talk and research being done. Just last week was a program on Radio 4 talking about it. 

1 hour ago, joe90 said:

as a resident of the Forest I am allowed to collect fallen wood to burn (as it’s no thicker than my arm)

So about a decade to capture some if the excess atmospheric CO2, and minutes to put it back in.

 

Domestic combustion should be stopped now.

If all the biomass in Earth was used as an energy crop, it would last about 400 days at current usage levels. Actually it would last a lot less as converting thermal energy to mechanical or electrical energy is not brilliant efficient.

 

On my trip up country yesterday, I passed a sign saying Europe's Largest Solar Farm. Then the message about stopping it.

FFS, where do these (expletive deleted) think electricity comes from, Unicorn Farts (I did pass Glastonbury in the way up, but it was further up the M5).

 

If in a decade we have installed enough wind capacity to supply 27% of the UKs electrical demand last year, with gas supplying 39‰, we can do a lot more in the next decade.

Saying it cannot be done is just wrong, talking oneself out of believing it can be done is a national pastime. We have the knowledge, and the engineering, and the cash to do it, just got to stops the false stories circulating about when the wind does not blow and the sun does not shine.

The chart below is from the Wikipedia page on UK Wind Power.

37%of the non wind and gas is basically low CO2 generation. We are a long way up the path to zero carbon electrical generation.

 

As I said earlier, there has been a huge change in the power generation industry, and most people have not noticed it at all. The storms a couple of years back took out the local distribution networks mostly, not the large bulk distribution, and to the best of my knowledge, it did not cause any major problems for the wind turbines.

 

But rather than focus purely old housing, with a quarter of our emission coming from transport (ish), and by the nature of cars getting replaced on a regular basis, and legislation coming in that makes them harder to drive in some towns and cities, we should see a rapid decline in vehicle emissions.

40 years ago, we often say very smoking cars, now it is very rare. 

The EU did a report about vehicle emissions.

Here is a useful chart.

Improvement were happening, so they can happen again.

 

 

[SteamyTea]

1 hour ago, RichardL said:

I suspect the AI just needs to hire a lawyer - or a lawyer see an opportunity to prove AI is sentient, therefore cannot turn it off and must fulfil its 'human' rights to feed it energy

What happens if an AI refused to answer questions, or just refused to give a convincing answer, will we stop it's benefits?

Many innocent people have been terminated, so I can't see the problem with turning off an AI. 

[SteamyTea]

There has been a bit on the radio about companies and the environment.

Analysis

 

Only got bits of it  but sounded interesting.

 

It got me thinking about corporate investing.

It should not be too hard to set up a business investment scheme that allowed you to offset your investment with an equivalent investment in green technology companies.

So say you want to invest in an armament company.

It should be easy enough to calculate their carbon footprint as they have to declare this already. Reducing it down to make life simple, let's say one tank has a carbon footprint if 300 tonnes.

As part of your investment you have to buy some shares in a green technology company, say a windturbine manufacturer. Now a windturbine can easily off set 300 tonnes of CO2. So only a small investment would be needed, maybe as small as 3% (would have to look into that) of your total investment.

One advantage of this is because CO2 is a global problem, it does not matter where this new development is geographically placed.

There are several African companies that would welcome electricity, even if it is not at the quality of service that the industrialised countries are used to i.e. a bit if wheat threshing can wait till it is windy (or sunny), it does not have to be done instantly, and it has to be better than beating it with sticks in the sun.

Maybe this is something that @Adsibob may know a bit about.

The big problem I could see happening with this is stopping green washing (ecobollocks).

As the financial industry is already highly regulated, and audited, tacking on genuine low carbon generation technology should not be too hard.

This would not be the same as carbon offsetting, it would be for genuine new generation where no generation is currently planned.

 

[Gone West]

14 hours ago, joe90 said:

I am allowed to collect fallen wood to burn (as it’s no thicker than my arm)

Better get eating plenty of tinned spinach then 😁.